'Sex tourist' football coach jailed for abusing young boys - The Coventry Observer

'Sex tourist' football coach jailed for abusing young boys

Coventry Editorial 26th Jun, 2014 Updated: 28th Oct, 2016   0

A FORMER junior football coach has been labelled a perverted sex tourist after admitting to filming himself abusing two young boys in Egypt.

Alan Rattigan, from Wyken, was jailed for four-and-a-half years at Warwick Crown Court this week and ordered to register as a sex offender for life after pleading guilty to a total of 11 charges.

They included causing two Egyptian boys, both believed to be under 13, to perform sex acts on each other and himself.

The 64-year-old also took indecent photographs and movies of children and made hundreds of indecent images, some of which featured himself and many appeared to have occurred in Egypt.




When the police raided Alan Rattigan’s home in February last year after receiving information that led to a search warrant, they found he had even framed a ‘deeply sick’ photo of himself involved in a sex act with one of the boys on his bedroom wall.

They also seized computers, storage media, a camcorder and tapes and photographic prints which made it ‘immediately apparent he had a sexual interest in young boys.’


Rattigan was a coach with Pinley football club’s under-15s side but his defence stressed that in 23 years playing sport and coaching there is no suggestion of any similar activity in this country at all.

“He is effectively a sex tourist, using the economic disparity between here in the West and other parts of the world for his sexual desires.” said Judge Richard Griffith-Jones.

Rattigan told police he was attracted by young male bodies, with a fetish for them wrestling.

He said he had first visited Egypt in 2000 and had visited many times since then. He was introduced to the two young boys in 2004 after being offered the opportunity to have sex with them for money.

Rattigan’s defence claimed it was not ‘sex tourism’ at the beginning and he did not have the willpower to resist when introduced to the young boys.

But Judge Griffith-Jones responded, saying: “He has been far more in control of events than he has accepted.

And when jailing Mr Rattigan, Judge Griffith commented: “There is something particularly distasteful about western men who travel to those parts of the world where there is not the same economic strength to take advantage for their perverse sexual desires.

“The sexual activity was recorded for your gratification, and you even had a picture, a deeply sick one quite frankly, of this sort of sexual activity in a picture frame in your room.”

Rattigan is now banned from doing any paid or voluntary work with children without the consent of the parents, who must have been made aware of his conviction.

The judge added: “This is going to make it impossible for him to coach his junior team.

“You have led a life which has drawn popularity and admiration from those around you. In truth there has been a darker side to your character; one with a perverse and damaging distorted sexual perspective.”

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